More best-picture nominees come home

Two movies expected to loom large over Sunday's Academy Awards telecast on ABC are now available for purchase and rental.

“The Theory of Everything” and “Birdman” are both nominated for best picture, and their stars are considered the front-runners for the best actor prize. The former stars Eddie Redmayne (“Les Miserables”) as famed physicist Stephen Hawking; the latter puts Michael Keaton in a satirical, self-referential turn as an actor best known for playing a superhero. Both films can be seen today on Blu-ray, DVD and digital HD — not to mention many suburban movie theaters.

This coming Tuesday, you can add another best-picture nominee, “Whiplash,” to your home collection. Supporting-actor shoo-in J.K. Simmons strides into this intense film like a demon — he's not the music teacher I'd want, but he's a perfect fit for Miles Teller's determined young drumming student. The debut feature from Damien Chazelle manages to feel intimate and bigger-than-life at the same time, and closes with the most exciting 20 minutes I saw on the big screen in 2014. (Daily Herald Film Critic Dann Gire and I agree: “Whiplash” was last year's best movie.)

Who I'm pulling for

• I'd be delighted if “Whiplash” won best picture on Sunday, but I'll settle for Simmons' expected win.

• Though I was not a fan of Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar,” I loved its overpowering, religioso score by Hans Zimmer. In a career that includes popular scores for “Gladiator,” “Inception” and about half the movies you've loved in the past 25 years, Zimmer has but one Oscar for 1994's “The Lion King.” It's time to change that Sunday.

• We don't all find Wes Anderson's films funny, but we can agree that his films are impeccably designed; “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is another marvel of construction, color, set-dressing and composition. Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock deserve the Oscar for best production design.

• “Nightcrawler” should have appeared many times on the list of Oscar nominees, but only shows up once: best original screenplay. First-time director Dan Gilroy's tale of a morally bereft TV news cameraman (Jake Gyllenhaal in a career-best performance) has no fat and no lulls.

About last week ...

The response to my column urging those who are so inclined to see “Fifty Shades of Grey” in a packed theater has been overwhelming. On our website, it's the most-read article I've ever written, by a wide margin. My mother's hypothesis may be correct: I encouraged you to see the movie and perhaps assuaged some feelings of guilt you may have had. (Or, you know, I wrote about a cultural phenomenon at the right time!)

So how was my communal theatergoing experience? My girlfriend and I saw it at 3 p.m. last Saturday — not exactly prime-time for R-rated adult fare — and the reaction from a quarter-full house was pretty muted. The biggest outburst probably came from me, at the very end, when I blurted out, “THAT'S IT?!?”

• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald copy editor and a tireless consumer of pop culture. You can follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.